


Aegis

by Davechicken



Series: Kylux - Fluff & Angst [3]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M, Non-detailed violence and injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-08
Updated: 2016-08-08
Packaged: 2018-08-07 13:01:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7715788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Davechicken/pseuds/Davechicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hux doesn't like people hurting Kylo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aegis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [evil_saint](https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_saint/gifts).



Hux would never forgive himself. Of all the ridiculous things to lose his temper over… indeed, to lose his temper at all. He’d forever chided Ren for his emotional outbursts, frustrated by the after-effects of an unchecked Dark Sider’s methods of off-setting his frustration and disappointment. How many times had they snarled the same argument back and forth, his face mere inches from Ren’s masked one? Him denying Kylo’s insistence that _he was just as bad_ , saying that he was only speaking in terms the Knight could understand…

…Kylo had been right. He had as much of an explosive mood, below what he passed off as control. It was just that he usually found ways to funnel the overflow. (Or, worse, he bottled it up and backed himself up with it.) Things had been much better since they’d realised they worked better _together_ than _in opposition_.

And also, you know, the sex. That helped with the anger, too. Kylo hadn’t taken his anger out on anything more than a training room in _months_. Unless you counted Hux’s body, which Hux certainly did. No matter which of them topped, if it was _one of those days_ they’d both be satisfied and exhausted by the time their heads hit the pillows, and the whispered _sorries_ would float in the air and be sealed into place with soft kisses. 

But no. Some things still got his back up, and apparently one of those things was calling Kylo _a Rebel-scum Jedi_. Because Kylo was none of those things.

Okay, so maybe he was a Jedi of the Dark kind - Hux was never sure what the man identified as from one day to the next when it came to the Force - but the _tone_ the man in the spaceport had said it in did _not_ sound like something Kylo would want to be labelled as. And just because his parents happened to be moronic, Republic-sympathisers (or in life, for one of them), that didn’t mean _Kylo was_. He’d had the balls to turn his back on the hateful, corrupt, bloated and hypocritical teachings they’d tried to indoctrinate him into. He’d _grown_ and made his own decisions, and _fought_ despite his set-backs, and–

Hux might have screamed a few of these things when his right fist impacted with their jaw, the sound of teeth loosening a pleasant victory. 

Kylo had been yelling at him to stand down, but once Hux saw red, it was game over. He literally couldn’t stop the repeated blows to the man’s jaw, even when he was kneeling astride him and two others grabbed him in the armpits. He’d kicked and spat and clawed and windmilled his long limbs in an attempt to get free, and by the time his vision cleared, he was being shoved into the bunk of his command shuttle, and Kylo _was not there_.

And now he had a split lip, an eye that didn’t like to be open, and his knuckles widened up raw every time he flexed them, even under the Bacta-wraps. He might also have bruising to his sides, and around his kidneys, but that pain was just a blanket of throbbing in with everything else, and worse?

 _He deserved it_. He deserved it. 

He’d lost all sense of decorum, launched into a fist-fight, and by all accounts the only reason he wasn’t lying dead in a gutter somewhere was because Kylo had then gone into full-on protective mode around his dust-cloud of rage. Even if he _had_ done it in… reasonably? good? faith… he’d been defending the intangible honour of his beloved Knight, leading to his Knight defending his very _actually_ tangible body, and now those **bastards** had him.

No one would tell him how it was possible. How it was possible that they’d left him behind. Kylo, Hux’s other half. His better half, in some ways (and worse in still more). They’d _left him_. They’d _dragged him off and left Kylo alone_. 

And now Hux had his wounds, but worse… no. It wasn’t even the worst that his pride was stung, the worst was he knew Kylo was suffering on his account, when he’d wanted to _save him from that_. He’d failed. Miserably. His one, real goal that was _personal,_ that wasn’t just ‘Power’, and he’d let a slight to him that Kylo didn’t even care about split them up.

Hux would have thrown up, but his stomach was empty.

Maybe he would, anyway.

***

Hux did not normally go in for ‘negotiation’, unless it was a budgetary request, and it was internal, then. The funds were finite, the galaxy was not, and thus sometimes you ended up on the opposite side of someone on the same side as you.

But the net gain was still the same: The Order won. One way or another. (Even if his way would be better.)

This, however, was a completely different field of battle. That’s what it _was_ , now: a **battle**. And he was _not going to back down._

“You know we’ll pay twice over whatever sum the Resistance _claims_ to be able to afford,” he said to the holo-recorder, hands behind his back bent to feel the broken skin.  


A reminder.

A reminder of what this was about.

“With all due respect, Captain,” the other said to the mediator, “…money isn’t everything.”  


“You would say that,” Hux muttered. “As you have none.”

“The Republic is prepared to pay–”  


“ _Not as much as me_ ,” Hux snarled, letting his temper get out again. Maybe he was supposed to play it cool and not drive the price up too high, but this was his _Kylo._  


“…not to mention the ability to expunge certain warrants outstanding on your–”  


“You don’t even care about him!” Hux snapped, getting too close to the recorder, which wheeled back so it didn’t film right up his nostrils.  


“General,” the woman replied, “…you are sadly mistaken.”  


“Oh, believe me, I’m anything but. He told me _all about_ you, and how you treated him, _madam_.” He knew he should use her rank, but he also didn’t recognise her organisation as valid, and this was not a mediation _with_ her, it was a negotiation where he tried to convince the wretched scum and villainy that had his Kylo to give him _back_.  


“I love my son very much,” Leia Organa replied, her eyes narrowing in a way that was so oddly reminiscent of her son that it made his stomach hurt like he’d eaten too much fruit. “And I want him back.”  


The pirate-smuggler-bounty-hunter-opportunistic-alien-scum-thing just steepled his fingers and looked between them. “Please, continue.”

“You loved him so much you sent him away to be castrated from his own emotions, you let him be tortured for years, and you were never even around for him!” Hux maybe needed to calm it down, but it was too late for that.  


“And you want to take him right back to that place you think was so bad for him?” Leia’s voice was like vibroblades attached to thermal detonators.   


“He has me.”  


“And you take so very good care of him,” Leia bit back. “Which is why we’re in this situation.”  


_But I love him_ , Hux thought, and didn’t say. _Yes, there’s been bad days, but we’re together, now, and it’s better_. And: _You’d just lock him in a cage and he’d be miserable_.

“He made his choice,” he said, instead. “And it was not you, or your Resistance.” It was him. It was Hux. And Hux was going to respect his choice and honour it and give _everything he had_ if it meant he got him back.  


There was a moment, then, when silence reigned. He’d said the thing, he’d… landed the killing blow, and even he had the ability to know you didn’t kick someone when you’d _murdered them so thoroughly_.

Kylo had chosen. Kylo had chosen _him_.

“You really love him?” she asked, and she was nearly crying, now, and -   


… _why did she have to look and sound so like him?_

Hux nodded. 

“I’m still going to fight for him.”  


“As am I,” he replied.  


He could respect that, in a way. It was perhaps the only thing they would agree on: that Kylo was worth fighting for. But she had already lost, and Kylo no longer wanted what she had to offer. He’d been second-fiddle to her work, and Hux knew because he’d told him. Quiet things, here and there. Shared secrets in the dark, to the ceiling. Not when eyes could meet, but when hands could.

 _He’s mine_.

“Well, I believe I have your offers now…” the bandit said. “I’ll consider them both.”  


“You should also read my counter-offer should you accept _hers_ ,” Hux said. He gestured at his tablet, sending through a list of his capital ships in the space near his main ports.  


A very, very blatant promise of death.

“I will,” the man said, looking a little green.  


***

They’d drugged him. They’d drugged him, and that was how they’d kept him under control. He was still subdued as he staggered away from the small group around him, walking through the neutral, open territory towards Hux.

Hux already had his lightsaber. He’d demanded that in advance, while they sorted out the exchange. Kylo was struggling to walk straight, and that must crush his pride all the more so.

It _hurt_ Hux to see this. It was _his_ fault. He had done this. 

When Kylo got close enough, he pushed himself under his arm. It was a testament to how drained and worn his Knight was that he allowed himself to be supported on the way back to their craft. Hux did not cast another glance back to the pirates, too busy helping his beloved.

In, in and onto a cot. He sat beside him, running the scans as quickly as he could. Kylo leaned against his side, and his eyes were shut. He looked dreadful, and Hux was _incandescent_ with rage.

“Kylo…”  


“I’m sorry,” he whispered, broken.  


“What? What do you have to be sorry for?”  


“I let them take me, I wasn’t strong enough, I–” His voice shattered, and his head went into his hands.  


Hux tossed the scanner aside, arms going wide around him. “It was my fault,” he insisted. “I lost my temper. I just… I didn’t like to think of them hurting you, even a little. It was my fault.”

“No…”  


“ _Yes_ ,” he insisted. “It was. I’m sorry it took me so long to get you back. I would rip the galaxy in half for you.”  


Kylo shuddered, turning into him, his hands coming up and finding his waist. His Knight seemed to be much smaller than usual, cringing into a little ball as he sought Hux’s protection, which he was only too happy to give it. If a little late. 

“Thank you,” Kylo whispered.  


“I even told your mother where to shove it,” Hux said, rubbing his cheek to Kylo’s hair.  


“…you… spoke to her?”  


“You commanded quite the fee on the negotiating table,” Hux said. “And I told her she had no right asking for you back.”  


Kylo clutched him harder still. His breathing on the edge of his own tears. “I love you,” he said, barely there. 

They didn’t often voice it directly, even if it was true. It just wasn’t part of how they communicated, and never likely would be.

“I love you, too,” he said, and pushed fingers through his hair. “And I’ll always protect you… or try to.”  


Kylo hummed against him, and they just sat like that until they got back home. Hux wasn’t letting him out of his sight for the foreseeable. No. He was going to make sure Kylo was _safe_.


End file.
